Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Forgiveness
- Forgiveness: Forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God. We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway. We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway. As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others. In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
God is a
forgiving God. It is one of the most
important characteristics of His nature as without His forgiveness, there could
be no positive relationship with Him.
Our ability to relate to Him depends solely upon His desire and ability
to forgive us in the first place.
I don’t
believe this dynamic is any more clear than Hezekiah’s action here in this
chapter. Everything that he has tried to
do to appease Sennacherib, King of Assyria, has failed. Now he turns and goes before God.
But here’s
the thing. Hezekiah has already stripped
God’s temple bare. So when he goes
before God in the temple, he is given a visible reminder of just how much he
messed up. He is responsible for the
temple being vacant and deprived of glory.
He is responsible for the threadbare – literally! – appearance. Hezekiah has to go into a place that should
represent the splendor and majesty of God and confess that he is to blame.
And God
hears him. God hears him and God
forgives him. God hears him and forgives
him and slays the Assyrians with a single blow.
The next day the Hebrew people in Jerusalem wake up and find the
Assyrian army dead at their doorstep.
There can be no doubt that this was an act of God. There can be no doubt that God is a loving
and forgiving God, willing to be in relationship with the truly repentant.
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